About

$31,633

pledged of $30,000 goal

497

backers

Since our birth as a collective 5 years ago we have seen it affirmed again and again:

We began as a single poster made by Indian artist Shilo Shiv Suleman in a moment of national trauma. Over the past four years, Shilo has developed a Public Art methodology that places affirmations at the center of social change; using beauty as resistance and Fearlessness as a tool for reclamation.

In 2015, Nida Mushtaq joined Fearless as our co-founder and a team of dynamic artists and organizers across the globe followed soon after.

We use participative storytelling tools, ritual, and a philosophy of affirmation to create beautiful, community led public art projects across the globe. We have worked with diverse communities ranging from the daughters of sex workers in New Delhi, to Syrian and Armenian refugees in Beirut, to the Tupinamba of Bahia, Brazil making monuments to personal histories and political realities.

We have refined and affirmed our methodology and public art practices through 25 murals, in eight countries and with hundreds of co-creators.

In 2018, we are dreaming of women on the streets, brushes in their hands, facilitating critical social justice conversations with communities, transforming it into art and claiming public space.

We are dedicated to making this dream come true via our first Fearless Collective Public Art Residency in South Asia.

There are three steps to making our vision of streets filled with women and beautiful Public Art come true:

Step 1: Resource

Step 2: Residency

Step 3: Movement

To make the toolkit and residency happen we will need a minimum of $30,000. This $30,000 will allow us to:

Convene nine artists from across South Asia in one space. This includes covering all costs related to their international travel, visas, accommodation, food, stipends, and local transportation.

Keep the Fearless Collective team on the job as we develop the toolkit and the residency curriculum

Cover basic toolkit production and printing costs associated with widely distributing this resource - both online as well as offline.

By donating to this campaign, you are helping us build a movement and we have something beautiful in return for you too. Each reward tier is a little piece of us in the form of our official Fearless merchandise line. It’s our way to say thank you for making our work possible, and help each of us carry a bit of the streets with us.

Thank you for supporting the Fearless Collective Artist Residency. Together, we can build a world with beauty for all.

As a collective grounded in participative methods, a crowdfunding campaign is a perfect fundraising fit.

Every donation you make helps us fund artists from across South Asia and make the residency a reality. Through your support, borders will be crossed and new communities will be formed.

We are running a Kickstarter now because we have the team, experience, and vision to help our work expand acros the region, and eventually around the world. When you fund this campaign, you are funding more than one resident. You are funding a the beginning of a regional network which creates and reclaims spaces across South Asia.

About the Residency:

The Residency will:

Develop a visually compelling open-source toolkit on: philosophies and practices of participative/ritualistic storytelling, mural-making and public art with a focus on social change.

Mentor residents in the unique methodologies, strategies, techniques and practices of Fearless Collective

Hold space and facilitate residents to adopt Fearless toolkit and methodologies into their own localized, personal form and style.
Create three murals with three communities

Equip residents with the basics of fundraising, grant writing, archiving, budgeting and project documentation of participative public art projects.

Costs:

$30,000 is our Kickstarter funding goal because it will provide the foundation we need to begin planning and developing the residency.

The full cost of running the residency is $70,000.

$70,000 allows us to go farther by:

Providing $1,600 (1 lakh INR) seed grants to each resident to return to their home community and complete three public art interventions over the course of 2019

Fully compensate Fearless team time as we create our toolkit, plan the residency, and mentor our new artists

Allow us to complete three community murals, led by residents, over the course of the residency

Rewards: ***Women's Day Only***

Partners and Collaborators:

Risks and challenges

Given the historical narratives of our neighboring countries, and the personal narrative of our collective, it is crucial that we bring Pakistani and Indian artists together. Given the complexities of visas and borders we will need to run the residency in a country that is accessible to all. This significantly increases our costs since it is impossible to host a residency in either Pakistan or India where our root networks as a collective exist.

With this intention in mind, visa issues remain a risk associated with running this residency. While we will select a location with relatively easy visa requirements for our South Asian residents geopolitics and visa rules are out of our hands. This could potentially mean at the last minute a resident is unable to attend decreasing the number of residents involved. We will do everything in our power to mitigate this risk by thorough planning and developing appropriate contingency plans.

Kickstarter is not a store.

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Women's Day Only: I Am of Here

“Living outside the lines of culture and gender is learning to take ownership of both. This is about saying: I am of here, this is my heritage also, and I have as much right to be here as anyone else.”